Consequences

Abstract

In the last part of his revolutionary 1916 paper on general relativity [10], Einstein draws several conclusions from the new theory that lead to testable predictions. Two of the most famous are that a massive body will bend light rays that pass near it and that the point on the orbit of Mercury that is closest to the sun (the perihelion point) will drift by an additional amount that the Newtonian theory cannot explain. Indeed, the perihelion drift was already known; Einstein’s prediction resolved a long-standing puzzle. And in 1919, measurements taken during an eclipse of the sun confirmed that light from stars that passed near the sun was deflected in just the way Einstein had deduced.

The erratum of this chapter is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6736-0_16